Every meal deserves a sharp dressed beer.

Grilled Autumn Pizza + Oktoberfest + Winners!

The afternoon got kicked off with a with a food n’ beer trade, hydrocodone, and a backseat cook. Suzi was on the hydro. Shelly was the backseat cook telling Hydro what to do. The incompetent leading drugged? Somehow, little to our knowledge, this pizza came to life. Shelly brought some Toppling Goliath Rover Truck Oatmeal Stout and Sam Adams Oktoberfest to share in exchange for some Dutch Apple Cream Cheese Bars. For a girl who says she doesn’t bake, the Suzi can bake a mean Dutch Apple bar, mind you, while drugged from getting her wisdom teeth removed. I mean, wow. First bite in that crust won me over. Forget the cream cheese and apples and crumbly topping. The crust was perfection. Moist, flavorful, so comforting as your teeth sunk into it. Love at first bite. Maybe if you ask nicely, Suzi will share that recipe soon once she comes back to life!

The Rankin apple tree is flooded with apples the size of small pumpkins. Pears are soon to follow! The excitement for this tiny fall bounty has us all Kristen Wiig on SNL. SO FREAKIN’ EXCITED. I might pass out. Can someone get me some solid food?

Why, yes, yes we can find some solid food. The freshly picked apples inspired this little diddy. How’s a Grilled Autumn Pizza sound? Heck, we’ll throw in an Oktoberfest because ’tis the season!

But first, we have an announcement to make! The winners of our very first giveaway!

And the winners are …

{Drumroll please}

Kellie D and Kim M! Please get in touch with Suzi to claim your prize. Thanks to all of you who cared and shared. As smoothly as this one went, we’ll be sure to do another in the future!

Directions:
1) Place onions and pancetta with 2 tablespoons of butter and a pinch of sage leaf in a skillet. Sauté the onions until they are caramelized.
2) Olive oil your pizza crust on both sides. Sprinkle mozzarella on the crust first. Then place your caramelized pancetta/ onion mixture on top of the mozzarella cheese. We dumped the wonderful grease from the skillet right on the pizza. A little grease won’t hurt anyone! After all, it’s where all the flavor lives!
3) Now crumble some of the smoked gouda on top of the onions/ pancetta. Place your thinly sliced apples on next. We did not use the whole apple, just enough slices to cover the pizza. Put more of your crumbled Gouda on top of the apples. Drizzle honey on top.

4) Place that pretty autumn festive pizza on the grill and cook until crispy. We used an electric GMG wood pellet grill and grilled on 400 degrees for about 20 minutes or so. These grills are very easy to run and the ladies do all the grilling around here because you set the thermostat and it controls the temperature like an oven! No lighting on this grill, you just turn it on! We picked a medium thick crust for this type of pizza because those toppings were a bit hearty! A small little thin flat bread couldn’t handle all of those toppings! This pizza’s got some weight to her! These are the wood pellets we we feed our grill! We used hickory!

5) Midway through the grilling process, we added some more mozzarella cheese and drizzle with more honey. Before serving, pour yourself a beer, garnish with shredded parmesan cheese, and drizzle more honey!

Now to the brews..

The beer for this occasion was a Millstream Oktoberfest. This brewery is located in Amana, Iowa. It’s only the first part of September and hotter than hot today in Iowa, but, hey, this beer is only available during the fall months so it will be gone before we know it! This beer is amber in color, a beautiful color if you ask us. Honestly, our favorite color. Just look at it! Isn’t she a beaut, Clark?! This is a German style beer and the ABV is 5.7% and tame on the hops. This beer only has 21 IBU’s. Very smooth, easy drinking and malty. Good with hearty meals. Now go get some of this beer to celebrate autumn and cool weather that’s a’comin! We highly recommend checking out the Amana Colonies as a day trip this fall. Plenty of shops, cheese, and brews. It’s just a wonderful Amish community rich with tradition! We don’t mean to brag about Iowa in every blog post, but we’re just so doggone proud of her! Iowa pride just oozes from us. To learn more about this brewery and to plan your day trip, click here.

If that doesn’t get you in the mood for a cozy fall day date, we don’t know what will! The picture on the below was taken shortly after we stuffed ourselves silly on a huge breakfast! If we haven’t already said it enough, Iowa isn’t as boring as we sound.